The Relevance of Western Sufism for the Study of Sufism in the Muslim World

Lecture M. Sedgwick

Mark Sedgwick examines the relationship between the study of Western Sufism and the study of Sufism in the Muslim world. He argues that while the early European reception of Sufism is of little significance for the understanding of Sufism in the Muslim world, Western Sufism during the late colonial period is more important, both for what it tells us about the colonial period in the Muslim world and for what it tells us about the phenomenon identified by Edward Said as Orientalism. Western Sufism of the colonial period is also part of the background to Sufism in the contemporary Muslim world, as the advance of globalization now means that some important Sufi phenomena can no longer be identified as Western or non-Western. Developments of both Western and non-Western origin must be taken into account in order to understand these.

Mark Sedgwick is professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at Aarhus University, and has worked Sufism in both non-Western and Western contexts. His books include *Saints and Sons: The Making and Remaking of the Rashidi Ahmadi Sufi Order, 1799-2000* (Leiden: Brill, 2005) and *Western Sufism: From the Abbasids to the New Age* (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). *Global Sufism: Boundaries, Structures, and Politics*, edited with Francesco Piraino, is due in 2019 from Hurst in London.